Do Not Throw Unwanted Water Refills On Your Red Lobster Waitress

There are many ways to tell the restaurant employee who is currently serving your table that you are satisfied with your present quantity of ice water and would not care for a refill. “I don’t need any water, thanks,” you could say when they approach with pitcher in hand. You could shake your head “no” at them if your mouth is crammed full of breaded shrimp. In an informal establishment, you could put a paper napkin on top of your glass. We do not recommend that you follow the lead of three Illinois women, who were charged with attacking their Red Lobster waitress. A witness told the media that the trio expressed their displeasure at too-frequent refills by tossing their ice water on their waitress, then striking her with their hands. And their menus.

It all went down Friday night in the St. Louis suburb. Red Lobster detained the women until police showed up, and they’ve been charged with mob action and aggravated battery in a public place. The waitress declined medical attention: for the physical attack, not for having ice water thrown at her. In December of last year, four customers attacked another waitress at the very same restaurant, and one of them has been charged with similar crimes.

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I might get violent over coffee or tea refills. It seems like eery time I get my tea sweetened just right, or just the right amount of cream in my coffee the waiter comes by and tops up my glass or mug, throwing off my balance. But ice water? What’s the harm from extra water on your table.

Um. No. I am a server. I have been a server in fine dining for ten years. While it is my job to intuit your wants and desires while you are at my table, such an unusual preference requires that you communicate it to me explicitly. If you do not, then I will come back in a little bit and try again.

I will not ask you every time because I don’t want to interrupt your time with your dining companions with whom you are presumably enjoying yourself, in between neurotic fits, of course.

If you want to be left alone until you want your coffee or tea refilled, tell your server that you have it just right and will ask for a refill when you are ready for one. Generally, at that point, the server will communicate to the assistants that they should not refill until requested. Sometimes one of the assistants does not get the word and will try to. Don’t freak out.

If you really object to verbally communicating your desire once, when you see someone approach to fill your cup, place your hand above your glass.

To be clear I wouldn’t actually get violent. I have a full decade of table waiting and restaurant management. I do also make it clear to servers that i will let them know if I need a refill. However I also trained my waitstaff to ask before topping up tea or coffee.

That was more to HoJu than to you. When my guests are in conversation I usually pause with the french press tilted above the cup before pouring to give the guest a moment to notice and object. Most people where I live don’t drink hot tea with dinner and only drink sweet iced tea, which we do not serve. Since the sweetener dissolves differently in cold water they typically find un-sweet tea with added sweetener insufficient.

In those ladies’ defense, Red Lobster waitresses seem unusually aggressive in refilling glasses. Neither polite words nor rude words nor physically blocking the glass with my arm would stop them. They gang up on you, too. Two of them held my arms down while one poured my sweet tea to overflowing, laughing derisively the whole time. They poured a whole pitcher of Sprite in my kid’s sippy cup, and “forgot” to take the lid off first..

Then they hit me in a face with a cheddar biscuit. And called me a wimp.

When I came out to my car, they had keyed into the side of my car “TIPS APPRECIATED. < 20 PERCENT OR GO TO OUTBACK, CHEAPSKATE". I thought that was kind of unnecessary.

OK, find an instance of another group of people launching an unprovoked attack against wait staff, clerk, or any other type of service provider. I’m not sure if race has anything to do with it, but culture certainly does. A culture were feeling “dissed” is a free pass to brutally attack someone is accepted and even encouraged.

Oh wow, you’ve just complete changed my mind. Maybe you could run for mayor of Chicago. Tell all of the people that the increasing violent crime is all the work of the evil media and lying tea party members.

Where did you get 12%? The U.S. Census Bureau estimates just over 40.8 million Black citizens in the U.S., and the federal prison statistic JJFIII cited implies an incarceration rate of 0.199%, not 12%. (The same data gives an incarceration rate of 0.053% for White citizens.)

It depends on what the question is. If it’s “what is the likelihood is in prison”, then we should look at the total population. If it’s “what is the likelihood prisoner is ”, then JJFIII is on the right track.

Unfortunately, these statistics say nothing about whether the crime committed was violent, so JJFIII’s point was doubly moot.

This is the federal system, which makes up less than 10% of the total number of incarnated individuals in the US. If you’re going to make an argument, at least try and make it even somewhat believable.

Not to split hairs here, but as a percentage of total population blacks are much more likely to be in prison. Then if you look at just those between the ages of 18 and 30 it is even more skewed.

Now that doesn’t mean race is the determining factor… It could very well be due to socioeconomic status, education level, byproducts of single parent homes or drug/alcohol use or a million other possibilities. However it isn’t early as easy to separate people based upon those features and is much easier to use gender, race, or age etc.

Point being – if you look at straight race and percentages in context, blacks are much more likely to be in the US prison system. I don’t want to give the race-baiters more ammo, but that is just a fact.

The problem is there are too many people the JJFIII that have a knee jerk reaction to any mention of race, and that doesn’t help any more then having the same views as the Klan. America has become so PC and shy of controversy that they will not even attempt to discuss problems that are happening it certain communities or demographics. They would rather blame other people or throw money at the problem then sit down and work on a solution.

Jackasses come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Not sure one is any worse than the other. That being said, I have noticed in some cases people exclude factors such as race when reporting a story because they don’t want to be perceived as racist. So is purposefully avoiding the subject just another form of racism?

There has to be more to this story and I’m bored so here is how it probably went:

They all show up to the restaurant, they get their seats and food. The waitress comes over to refill their water and they tell her they have enough. Some time passes and the waitress comes over and refills the water (because that’s her job) but she forgets they didn’t want anymore or perhaps the waitress doesn’t quite realize how important water conservation is to these 3 women. Then the 3 women get all bitchy. Then the waitress without realizing what she just did, comes back to refill water again and the waitress doesn’t understand why the 3 women are such bitches. So then the waitress decides she should be a bitch also and goes to refill the water anyway. Then the bitchyness hits critical mass and estrogen ignites.

Sec. 25-1. Mob action.
(a) A person commits the offense of mob action when he or she engages in any of the following:
(1) the knowing or reckless use of force or violence

disturbing the public peace by 2 or more persons acting together and without authority of law;
(2) the knowing assembly of 2 or more persons with

the intent to commit or facilitate the commission of a felony or misdemeanor; or
(3) the knowing assembly of 2 or more persons,

without authority of law, for the purpose of doing violence to the person or property of anyone supposed to have been guilty of a violation of the law, or for the purpose of exercising correctional powers or regulative powers over any person by violence.

Do you know how many times I’ve gone to dinner and had an empty glass for most of my meal, with the server nowhere to be found? It might be annoying if she keeps coming back every five minutes, but at least she’s doing her job.

“…Red Lobster detained the women until police showed up, and they’ve been charged with mob action and aggravated battery in a public place.”

This makes it sounds like Red Lobster had been charged with mob action and aggravated battery. I had to read the sentence several times, because I thought the Red Lobster employees had been charged because they detained the customers.

Technically, I suppose it truly reads like the police have been charged. The “they” is a big too vague here.

I feel really bad for the waitress. Servers have to deal with idiots all day long and said idiots have no right to treat them like they’re less than human just because they work in the food service industry. Servers are performing a job and that job happens to suck, but that doesn’t mean people have the right to act like they’re above them, especially the types that get all high and mighty when it comes time to leave the tip. “Oh, server Jane was took a minute too long to refill my soda, minus $1 from her tip for that”. You know those types. Be nice to your server, they could be having a crappy day and saying “Please” and “Thank You” and treating them like an equal could make that crappy day just a little better.

I could sort of see a bad reaction being justified if someone starts giving you endless refills of something that doesn’t have free refills. I’ve encountered things like that a few times, where the server circulated through and refilled my soft drink without saying a word, then had three, four or five soft drinks appear on the bill when I thought I’d only ordered one (the worst offender was this place that had very small soft drink glasses, that wound up charging me $2 a glass for the first one that I did order, plus eight refills I never asked for).